He hesitated for a moment, but still got up and changed his clothes. He glanced at the memo alarm on his phone, getting ready to head out.

At this time, he needed to go to the school. The alarm had a note: Advisor David Brooks.

When William Thompson saw the name, memories of a good advisor he’d met during university quickly flooded his mind.

He had once been an outstanding student highly valued by this advisor. Unfortunately... later, the advisor recommended him to a better university for further study and exchange. On that stronger platform, during an intensive training session, he truly witnessed the limits of his own intelligence.

Comprehension, speed of thought, reaction time—all lagged behind the pace of the meetings. In fact, among most of the participants, he was at the bottom.

On top of that, his arguments with his sister Henry Thompson escalated at the time. Both incidents made his former self feel utterly bleak about the future of his chosen field, unable to see even a glimmer of hope.

Since then, William Thompson had suffered a heavy blow and never recovered. In the end, he graduated from university as just an ordinary undergraduate, not even taking the graduate entrance exam.

Looking at the memo on his phone, William Thompson steadied himself. From yesterday to now, he finally had a bit of time to truly understand the state of this world.

And in the information age, the best way to learn is with the device in his hand.

He closed the memo and skillfully opened the phone browser, immediately searching for: world map.

Click. The phone screen instantly refreshed, displaying a long list of various information.

‘Latest world map.’

‘Global satellite map HD download.’

‘World map super large HD.’

‘Global map HD paid.’

Rows of messy ads mixed with pictures of beautiful women were scattered throughout.

Dense white text on a black background made it hard for him to know which one to pick for a moment.

‘Just pick one at random.’ William Thompson tapped his finger, choosing the plainest, most unadorned link and clicked in.

The phone screen turned white at once.

Three characters slowly appeared in the center: 文心塔.

In the lower right corner below was the system in use: Yiguo Linglong Satellite Positioning System.

‘Yiguo?’ William Thompson paused in his heart.

Soon, the white on the phone screen faded, replaced by a huge pale blue planet.

There were landmasses and oceans on the planet, but what shocked and astonished William Thompson most was the huge label in the center of the planet.

—Diyue.

Not Earth!

Diyue!?

At this moment, related memories quickly surfaced in his mind.

Then, as if the internet speed refreshed, on one side of this giant planet called Diyue, another much smaller planet slowly appeared—a small, entirely grayish-white planet—Baixing.

The two planets were bizarrely close together, the distance between them like that of Earth and the Moon in his previous life.

But Baixing was clearly larger than the Moon by a margin.

Buzz.

At this moment, an important news pop-up automatically appeared at the top of the phone.

‘Baixing’s Minister of Security, Theresa Ausli, has arrived in the capital of Hiltistan, Oga, by special plane, officially beginning the planned fifteen-day global security conference.’

‘In response to minor building collapses due to aging in the old city district, Yiguo’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has issued an important notice: houses in areas surveyed as Level 5 danger zones will undergo engineering repairs and replacements to ensure normal living conditions for city residents.’

‘A new round of water and electricity infrastructure planning has begun in the urban area of Suiyang City. City leaders visited the site in person, offering warm condolences to families in difficulty, and provided corresponding relief funds to a few households in extreme hardship.

It is understood that after this round of planning and renovation, more than 1,300 households will benefit, which will play an important role in thoroughly improving the appearance of Suiyang City...’

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004 World II (Thanks to Chen for the old tune alliance leader)

A string of news seemed to have all come with the world map link William Thompson opened.

And as these messy news items popped up, a flood of macro-level information about the world as a whole surged crazily into his mind.

‘Ugh...’ He put down his phone, gently covering his forehead, where a sharp pain was pulsing from inside.

A massive tide of data and memories surged into his mind like a flood, merging with his current consciousness.

As the information poured in, he finally gained a comprehensive understanding of his predecessor’s situation.

This was an era of bipolar rivalry, teetering on the edge between peace and war.

Yiguo and Baixing—these were the two poles of the rivalry, two great nations.

Diyue was under the influence of the vast empire called Yiguo. Across all of Diyue, no country could rival Yiguo.

And the place he now lived was Suiyang City, Yiguo.

Yiguo was a country somewhat similar to Huaguo, with similarities in culture, philosophy, and lifestyle, but also many differences in detail.

As for Baixing, his predecessor didn’t know much—after all, it was truly an empire on another planet.

He only knew that Baixing’s technology was more advanced than Diyue’s, and currently held the advantage in the bipolar rivalry.

As for his predecessor, he was just an ordinary member among millions of university students in Yiguo.

If he hadn’t come here, most likely, after repeatedly failing to find a good job, his predecessor would have lowered his expectations and taken on work with lower income and social status.